Thirty-seven people die as Middle East violence escalates

12.15pm

GAZA - In a rapid escalation of violence, 37 people have been killed in two days of bloodshed in the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem.

An Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip today killed seven people, including a senior Hamas militant, his wife and one-year-old daughter

In separate incidents near the West Bank city of Jenin, Palestinian gunmen shot and killed an Israeli and soldiers shot dead two Palestinian militants, military sources said.

The violence led US President George W. Bush to dispatch a veteran US
diplomat to Israel and Secretary of State Colin Powell to a summit of international peacemakers.

Helicopters fired six missiles into Gaza City today, reducing a Subaru car to charred metal and injuring more than 40 bystanders, witnesses said.

Palestinians and the army identified the dead militant as Yasser Taha, a senior member of Hamas's military wing wanted by Israel.

Palestinian sources said his wife and one-year-old daughter also died in the strike.

The army said Taha's family was killed by mistake. "We regret this incident and are investigating," an army spokesman said.

Hamas vowed revenge.

"These are killers of children, women, innocent people...Let us wait and see who is going to destroy the other," said senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged at a cabinet meeting to press ahead with attacks against Hamas.

"The operations will continue," said an Israeli security official. "No one is immune."

The renewed violence put to test Bush's commitment to the "road map" to Middle East peace he promoted at a landmark summit in the Jordanian port of Aqaba last week.

Administration officials said Bush would send veteran diplomat John Wolf to Jerusalem as early as Saturday to lead an American team charged with monitoring the day-to-day process of the road map, which envisages a Palestinian state by 2005.

Powell, who called the foreign ministers of Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt on Thursday, will attend a meeting of the quartet of nations that drafted the road map on June 22.

Expected to be held in Amman, Jordan, the meeting will bring together the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union and could give Powell the chance to visit Israel and its Arab neighbours.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on Thursday blamed the recent round of violence on Palestinian militants.

"The issue is not Israel, the issue is not the Palestinian Authority, the issue is the terrorists who are killing in an attempt to stop the (peace) process," he said.

"The issue is Hamas, the terrorists are Hamas."

Today's missile strike came after Sharon called Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas "a chick without feathers" and Palestinian leaders "crybabies who let terror run rampant."

"We have to help him (Abbas) fight terror until his feathers grow," a source quoted Sharon telling his right-wing cabinet.

Palestinian officials say Israeli military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have weakened Palestinian security forces and made it impossible for them to tackle militants.

Palestinian cabinet minister Ziad Abu Amr said the Israeli leader was "throwing out silly descriptions and silly allegations" to cover his failure to seek a diplomatic solution.

- REUTERS